A CRITIQUE

Prepared by:

Michel Reveche

Angel Ligutan

Mica Ella Alpas

Abegail Sering

Loren Torrenueva
 All about the Author
John Griffith London (born John Griffith Chaney;[1] January 12, 1876 – November
22, 1916)[2][3][4][5] was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in
the world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first writers to become a
worldwide celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in
the genre that would later become known as science fiction.[6]
His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in
the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of
the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as
"The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and of the San Francisco Bay area in The
Sea Wolf.
London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a
passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. He wrote
several powerful works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron
Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, and The War of the Classes.
London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. The house burned
down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; the California Historical
Society placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Although the family was working class, it
was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed[. London was largely self-
educated[citation needed].
In 1885, London found and read Ouida's long Victorian novel Signa.[11][12][11] He credited
this as the seed of his literary success.[13] In 1886, he went to the Oakland Public
Library and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith, who encouraged his learning.
(She later became California's first poet laureate and an important figure in the San
Francisco literary community).[14]
In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery. Seeking a
way out, he borrowed money from his foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought
the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank, and became an
oyster pirate himself. In his memoir, John Barleycorn, he claims also to have stolen
French Frank's mistress Mamie.[15][16][17] After a few months, his sloop became damaged
beyond repair. London hired on as a member of the California Fish Patrol.
In 1893, he signed on to the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland, bound for the coast of
Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of
'93 and Oakland was swept by labor unrest. After grueling jobs in a jute mill and a
street-railway power plant, London joined Coxey's Armyand began his career as a
tramp. In 1894, he spent 30 days for vagrancy in the Erie County Penitentiary at Buffalo,
New York. In The Road, he wrote:
Man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County
Pen. I say 'unprintable'; and in justice I must also say undescribable. They were
unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world
and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach
bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of
things as I there saw them.
After many experiences as a hobo and a sailor, he returned to Oakland and
attended Oakland High School. He contributed a number of articles to the high school's
magazine, The Aegis. His first published work was "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", an
account of his sailing experiences.[18]

Jack London studying at Heinold's First and Last Chance in 1886

As a schoolboy, London often studied at Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, a
port-side bar in Oakland. At 17, he confessed to the bar's owner, John Heinold, his
desire to attend university and pursue a career as a writer. Heinold lent London tuition
money to attend college.
 Short Story
A man travels in the Yukon (near the border of current day Alaska) on an extremely
cold morning with a husky wolf-dog. The cold does not faze the man, a newcomer to the
Yukon, who plans to meet his friends by six o'clock at an old claim. As it grows colder,
he realizes his unprotected cheekbones will freeze, but he does not pay it much
attention. He walks along a creek trail, mindful of the dangerous, concealed springs;
even getting wet feet on such a cold day is extremely dangerous. He stops for lunch
and builds a fire.

The man continues on and, in a seemingly safe spot, falls through the snow and wets
himself up to his shins. He curses his luck; starting a fire and drying his foot-gear will
delay him at least an hour. His feet and fingers are numb, but he starts the fire. He
remembers the old-timer from Sulphur Creek who had warned him that no man should
travel in the Klondike alone when the temperature was fifty degrees below zero.
The man unties his icy moccasins, but before he can cut the frozen strings on them,
clumps of snow from the spruce tree above fall down and snuff out the fire. Though
building a fire in the open would have been wiser, it had been easier for the man to take
twigs from the spruce tree and drop them directly below on to the fire. Each time he
pulled a twig, he had slightly agitated the tree until, at this point, a bough high up had
capsized its load of snow. It capsized lower boughs in turn until a small avalanche had
blotted out the fire.

The man is scared, and sets himself to building a new fire, aware that he is already
going to lose a few toes from frostbite. He gathers twigs and grasses. His fingers numb
and nearly lifeless, he unsuccessfully attempts to light a match. He grabs all his
matches--seventy--and lights them simultaneously, then sets fire to a piece of bark. He
starts the fire, but in trying to protect it from pieces of moss, it soon goes out.

The man decides to kill the dog and puts his hands inside its warm body to restore his
circulation. He calls out to the dog, but something fearful and strange in his voice
frightens the dog. The dog finally comes forward and the man grabs it in his arms. But
he cannot kill the dog, since he is unable to pull out his knife or even throttle the animal.
He lets it go.
The man realizes that frostbite is now a less worrisome prospect than death. He panics
and runs along the creek trail, trying to restore circulation, the dog at his heels. But his
endurance gives out, and finally he falls and cannot rise. He fights against the thought
of his body freezing, but it is too powerful a vision, and he runs again. He falls again,
and makes one last panicked run and falls once more. He decides he should meet
death in a more dignified manner. He imagines his friends finding his body tomorrow.

The man falls off into a comfortable sleep. The dog does not understand why the man is
sitting in the snow like that without making a fire. As the night comes, it comes closer
and detects death in the man's scent. It runs away in the direction of the camp, "where
were the other food-providers and fire-providers."
 Content
Jack London’s short story, “To Build a Fire,” is the tragic tale of a man who decides to
travel alone through the hostile environment of the Yukon in sub-freeing temperatures
and falls victim to the unrelenting and unforgiving power of nature. During his journey,
the man gets his feet wet as he falls through the ice into the water of a hot spring
(London 122). Because of the severity of the cold, some “one hundred and seven
degrees below [the] freezing point,” the man’s life depends upon his ability to promptly
light a fire to keep his feet from freezing (122-23). After one, half-successful fire-starting
endeavor, and several other pitiful attempts, the hopelessness of the man’s lone
struggle against the hostile environment of the Yukon begins to become apparent. After
a lengthy episode of panic in which the man tries desperately to return the feeling to his
extremities by “running around like a chicken with its head cut off” (128), the man at last
“grows calm and decides to meet death with dignity . . .” (Labor 66). The story’s central
theme is one portrayed by many existentialist writers—that man lives a solitary
existence which is subject to the relentless, unforgiving forces of nature; an ever so
subtle part of this theme is that it is man’s goal to find meaning in his existence.

Author Intention/Purpose
London emphasizes the existential theme in “To Build a Fire” in several ways, the most
important of which is his selection of the setting in which the story takes place. The story
is set in the wilderness of the frozen Yukon during the harsh winter months when “there
was no sun nor hint of sun” in the sky. London places his solitary human character in
the perilous setting of the wilderness of the Yukon, which is enough to begin to illustrate
his theme, but when London combines this unforgiving environment with the deadly cold
of the Yukon winter, he creates a setting which is the epitome of the hostile, existential
environment. The remoteness of the Yukon wilderness, as well as the absence of a
human travel companion for the man, serve to illustrate the existentialist idea that man
is alone in the universe. To further emphasize this idea, London has not given the
protagonist a name, but simply refers to him as “the man” throughout the story. By not
naming the character, London has placed him at an even greater distance from the
reader within his deadly setting, thus isolating him all the more in a bleak and hostile
universe.

Moreover, Jack London specialized in stories about the wilderness. His running theme
involved the raw majesty and power of the elements. Naturalism was London's mantra
and this story is a perfect example of this. In "To Build a Fire" the setting is in the
Yukon. It is cold, merciless and wild. The man, who does not even have a name, is
secondary to the setting. London wants to show the fragility of man in the natural world.
My Reactions
 Literary Devices
Repetition: There are several notable instances of repetition throughout “To Build a
Fire.” The man is constantly thawing and refreezing various parts of his body, showing
the futility of his efforts to remain warm. Three times he attempts to build a fire, each
attempt more desperate and less successful than the last, emphasizing the increasing
mortal danger of his situation. The man’s tobacco chewing, which he prioritizes over
more important matters, occurs several times when the man is underestimating the
environment’s hazards. Finally, the man’s notion of “cold” is constantly being
redefined—the longer he spends in the wilderness, the more frequently he has to
reconsider his previous evaluation of the temperature.

Imagery: London’s portrayals of the Yukon landscape are beautiful and evocative, but
often emphasize the man’s smallness in relation to the vast swaths of snow and ice
surrounding him. Furthermore, other sensory descriptions—such as the visual and
sound of the man’s spit cracking on the snow—are meant to show nature’s inhospitality.

Foreshadowing: Foreshadowing throughout the story contributes to the reader’s sense

that the outcome—the man’s freezing to death—is inevitable. The man’s inexperience,
shown through lines such as “Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty
degrees below zero,” hint to the reader that the man’s lack of concern will be
problematic for him. The old-timer’s advice, which the man recalls several times, also
foreshadows the man’s missteps. Despite the old-timer’s warnings, for example, the
man takes off running with wet feet—the last in a series of poor choices that leads to his
death.

Difficult Words

Smite - to send a sharp blow; to strike

Apprehension - fearful feeling; dread

Conflagration - a large destructive fire

Reiterate - to say, state, or perform again

Imperative - necessary, urgent

Intangible - difficult to define; vague

Conjectural - based on a guess; not proved

Peremptorily - in a commanding manner

My Learnings